


Good.

by BLM



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Angst and Romance, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Character(s) of Color, Eventual Smut, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 12:02:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14544312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BLM/pseuds/BLM
Summary: She knew Erik; the nigga, the man, and the militant. And he was back, unwanted, and good again. A slim character study of Erik, from outside eyes. OCxErik





	Good.

She heard a notification from her phone, so Akilah put down the spoon and leaned over her kitchen table to view the text.

 

**Come out**

 

Okay, she thought, but her question was what’s with the unknown number and the unknown country code.

He stood on the main road in front of her compound, just before it dipped down to her house. His black duffle bag on the ground, one leg cocked to the side with his eyes roaming her current figure.

And Akilah was confused because first she no longer lived in California and secondly this was the ex of all exes that people committed to not thinking anything of, except this man was also her best love, which gave her heart palpitations. She looked at his dark orange windbreaker, to the Nike sweats, to a pair of matching kicks that wasn’t soiled in the clay mud, that confident stance and those ugly ass dreads he had on top of his head with the fade. Erik’s presence had her speechless.

“So you gon’ invite me in?” 

Akilah shifted to the other foot; with the lack of a greeting and statement of purpose she exactly remembered why she thought he was the foulest thing. Her hate for him covered everything. No hello, just a ‘you already know what it is.’

“First ah’ al’ Niggaaa, I live in Ethiopia, rural Ethiopia,” she enunciated, “How da fuck you here? ’Cuz devil dick don’t appear like dis.”

“You got jokes,” he responded, lightly clapping his hands and then rubbing them together, “Africa ain’t a fix all, this place don’t help. But I ain’t playin’ games, we don’t got time.”    

“Ain’t shit I know, you had years of it. Yo like what da fuck is dis? You got me confused an’ I’m cookin’. I told you to leave me out of al’ yo shit, even before you told me all da deets. Like why nigga? Damn. Like what’s wrong? Me and you been had peace!”

Erik and her had settled their relationship woes more than three years back and since then she was good. After them, Akilah focused on work and finally begun to be equally invested in working on “herself’ as he had himself. Like she knew the bare facts about him being alive, doing lots of freelance work, and traveling about, but there was little between them that would give a reason to communicate. Not even on her mother’s death would she ever speak to him, from how they left it. She didn’t have any cute damaging thoughts like playing the waiting game and how he would eventually change and comeback or that there wasn’t another “one” out there for her and that she would die loved by a man without gangsta charm and root deep education. She also didn’t feel evil toward him but only because of the time-distance and the simple lack of emotions she manicured her life around now.

“Bet.”

“Mhm,” she hummed back, just as fast. She wasn’t about to give him a time of day, even if he sought her out. They did that already.

“An’ Imma peacefully stroll in dat house,” he told her, “and eat lunch witchu. ”

She sighed, she just gave a perfect opening for a greedy nigga to get in, unintentionally. 

Lunch became a brief affair; the shiro wat had burned while Akilah was outside.

“Fuck man. Damn, what’s quick?” she muttered, as she raked the burnt pot with a spoon her eyes searching for food ideas.

Erik peered at the charred remains from over her shoulder, “ Was the food hot? You always eating spicy shit.”

“A little,” she chuckled, “but I’m not cutting and chopping nothing else, so make a pick. Noodles?”

“You mean ramen, my nigga?”

“Mm”

“Then no, we ain’t in college no mo’.”

“Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwiches? Oatmeal?”

“Like what the fuck. You go from the ‘jects to breakfast food?” Erik asked.

“I ain’t cooking. I mean that shit.”

“Yo oatmeal slap, but damn.”

 In the end, he chose peanut butter and honey sandwiches with the addition of her last banana for lunch. As she fixed the plates she watched him survey her, and she wanted to ask all the hard questions before she wasted the food, but with him here, the food would be wasted either way.

Akilah knew that during his tour of service he had worked in almost every continent, most of it off the grid and unofficial, and on this continent specifically in Central and Southern Africa. But Erik coming here to Ethiopia was unexplainable, he finished using the American government for all they got, he had no special interest in studying the only other country in Africa that was never colonized, nor did Ethiopia have claim to most of its historical artifacts, so that left… what? She didn’t know.  

“Here,” she said handing him a plate, watching as he took a huge bite and licked the honey off a finger, exposing his bedazzled attachments. That’s new, she thought, but always and forever Extra Erik Everyday.

“So this was how you got skinny? Making food and staring at it and shit,” he said, before a loud smack, “That’s new. You hate sweets na?”

She gave a small snort and said, ”Fuck you Erik. It’s called adaptation and not having munchie food.“

“Oh forreal? Tell me what dis is den? ‘Cuz yo big booty ass use to eat er’thang wit no discrimination.”

“Who you comin’ for? You make scraps quicker den me. Boi, you stayed slobbin’ over my food.”

“I always do,” he said, showing off the crumbs of his three eaten sandwiches on the plate, “Come on, Aki. Eat.”

She blinked, that name was his for her. In that moment, Dear God she wanted to concede to him. There was an echo of all what that word meant, in their eyes. He had a nickname too, but all of that no longer mattered to her, so instead she took a sip of her tea. 

Cool,” he said, taking his weight off his forearms and leaning back, “King’s dead.”

 

* * *

 

“So you really doin’ it?” She asked with him between her legs. Erik was on his knees on the tarp flooring, head bent to her as she sat on the bed, giving him equal attention.

“I’m doing it for us. For you.”

Akilah searched his eyes, looking at all that she couldn’t keep. Most Black people did all they could to block it out, lived with the facts like a heirloom that was too precious to open, others educated themselves and then fought, and Erik was in a category all of his own. He was the only person she knew that kept such a base personality that was purely reactionary, that thought too greatly, had internalized the system so completely and that had had no mercy for anyone that wasn't his people. She remembered that he had always slept well at night, content about his answer to their problem.

His eyes sat still on her; a hand on her left knee with the blunt’s ashes falling to the ground, the other hand twirling something in his pocket. He kneeled like that for quite some time, he demanded her attention, wanted a verbal answer to his statement.

During her contemplating, her sight had dropped a little past his collarbone, focusing on the pattern of ridges that lay underneath his shirt. To her, he kept his body as a weapon to be used against the world to defend his own pain. And with an exhale Akilah put an arm around his neck, goose bumps rising to meet the kills through his shirt, pulling him close till their foreheads touched, noses kissing.

 “I know, but you are mostly fighting for yourself.”

“We all been harmed. Ain’t nobody helpin’ us and I’m black as you.”

“I’ll smoke to that.” Akilah said.

Erik took another quiet puff and passed the blunt along, exhaling through his nostrils. “And me?” he asked.

“No.”

“Hate me all you want,” he said and then swallowed, “but…I love yo ass an’…I’m just tellin’ you that I’m here and to answer my calls. Not for you to give up yo niggas, yo job, and the happiness you found, aight…I’m just tellin’.”

As if burned she pulled back, and was about to start, like the recent turmoil in Wakanda was the reason why he was ready to be more constant. She understood that men by habit did not commit to new things until they were comfortable; she knew this from all the masculine patterns she witnessed in her life. And the only way to interrupt these men thought processes was to wreck their life by jumping ahead. But Akilah was beyond that, she had swerved to Africa and had found peace for them, although she still was in a conundrum for the oppression the diaspora faced.

To her, she only wanted his obsession to embrace him, she had realized a time back that she was only an intermission in his life.

Before she could speak, Erik flexed, snatched the blunt from her, withdrew to sit on his heels for a second and stood up. “I gotta take a shit,” he said, and then he was out the back door. 

She couldn’t deal. 

Erik was back, complaisant and serious. The three strikes had her laying on her back strewn sideways on the bed, her arm covering her eyes and nose as she attempted to settle the situation in her soul. She couldn’t figure out what type of shit that nigga was trying to pull on her because the amount of his agreeability was seeming to illustrate too much of the truth between them. And nobody was ready for that. She wasn’t ready for that.

Today was Tuesday and it was a normal day, where she came home from work, warmed the shiro wat she cooked from last night, begged a neighbor for injera, and thought about nothing important for the rest of the day. She liked being mindless but this man was bringing everything back to her, like her knowing his true name, that although he could inflict physical pain on himself and everyone else easily he was a bitch about heat with anything above Honey BBQ, that he used sap from myrrh trees to define his scars, that his half-brother being killed actually turned him militant, that his most prized possession was that ring around his neck, and that that man had loved his Mama.

By the time Erik came back into her home she felt flayed from her thoughts, she didn’t move and he equally gave no acknowledgement on his part, except the burn of his gaze. It hurt.

One-moment, two-moment and she heard him drop something down and shuffle around, doing who knows’ what because he had never been inside her house before.

 Three-moment, something was unzipped. 

Akilah hated that there was steady contention in her house, and by house she meant one room that had more length than width that was entirely composed of wood, hay, and clay-mud with a tin top. This was home for two years and it had given her time to evolve into her next self. 

Was that water she heard? Nigga was getting too comfortable breathing.

Five-moment, there was a dip on the mattress and she shot up ready to match, but he was shirtless and she tried to estimate the additions instead. She couldn’t.

It was only a side view.

She closed her eyes, pulled her knees to her chest and prayed. How sway? If she ever doubted his seriousness it would stop today. But she couldn’t help playing stupid, because the truth was unspeakable.

“Anything else?”

Seven-Moment, he didn’t answer so she opened her eyes to be linked to his fury, past the coarse forest of his dreads and pretty boy eyelashes. Erik’s head was dropped low, turned her way with his eyelids slits as he observed her from the other end of the bed.

She guessed he was mad from her petty question and someone had to be the adult between him and her, but stubborn loved stubborn.

So slowly Akilah twisted and scooted to the edge of the bed then stretched and stood to fixate her attention on changing into her house-clothes because it was time to go back to regular life, which also including forgetting Erik.

Except she had brought enough food for the visitant and her at the market.

He was still on the bed when she returned, but he had moved to have his back against the wall, one hand typing on his laptop the other on his phone, his dreads in a ponytail with her red hair band. 

Their eyes cut minutely, and then he went back to his phone with a clenched jaw and she begun to reorganize the basket of food. Opps, she thought, she was gone for two hours; traveling, bargaining, socializing, ignoring, and hoping in equal amounts that he just wanted to use her instead of that gushy-gushy shit. Next Akilah stooped down and washed three mangos in the basin at her feet.

“Erik,” she said, tilting her head in his direction, “Do you want a mango?”

“E-rikk,” she repeated upon his silence, not bothering to turn around. Mangos were a favorite of his.

“No.”

“Look, we peaceful and-“

“Nah, we ain’t Akilah. Playin’ pitty pat petty wit ma ass. Got me waitin’ here like I’m some random nigga…dat shit not gon’ do. An’ you kn—mm,” he growled.

Well he turnt, she thought, while standing up. Okay, technically she was being a bad hostess to an uninvited guest, but that was the point. She didn’t want anything from Erik, and he knew everything about that, just like they both still knew that they were still trapped.

“The mango is the sorry nigga,” she huffed, upon walking over to him and offering the mango out.

“Nah, be serious.“ 

Akilah sat on the edge of the bed, one leg on, one leg off, “About what? How you rolling up to Wakanda? Okay, dat's cool. I live in Ethiopia, ain’t no white people live in this town,” she told him.

Erik had such a palpable rage from her response, shoulders squaring with a flinch in the arm closest to her, like he wanted to snatch the spite from her soul. It made her laugh because nigga came to her house talkin’ dat stupid shit. She was always that disrespectful bitch, and that’s how he became her nigga. Fuck, he was…her nigga and at one point that was all that mattered.

“Nigga chill, aight?” she rephrased, changing her tone, “Eat the mango first.”

“Fine, but where da knife at?”

“Chomp Chomp nigga, use ‘does pretty teeth.”


End file.
